June 03, 2005
Texas A&M carded a 302 in wet, windy conditions on Friday and missed the cut for Saturday's final round at the 108th NCAA Men's Golf Championships at Caves Valley Golf Club.
The Aggies finished tied for 26th with a 296-296-302=894 total. The top 15 teams advance to the final round. A&M was 11 strokes out of 15th place.
"The conditions were pretty miserable today," A&M coach J.T. Higgins said. "The kids gave great effort and with nine holes left we still had a chance to make the cut. We played hard but things just didn't go our way."
Georgia took a nine-shot lead with a 274-284-297=855 total, while Georgia Tech is second at 864. Other teams advancing are Southern California (875), UNLV (876), Duke (877), Arizona State (877), Washington (877), Kentucky (877), Augusta State (877), Georgia State (879), BYU (879), New Mexico (880), Tennessee (880), Oklahoma State (882) and Georgia Southern (883).
Not advancing were Wake Forest (884), Arizona (885), Florida (888), Stanford (888), Missouri (890), Coastal Carolina (890), SMU (892), San Diego State (893), Purdue (893), Texas (893), A&M (894), Arkansas (894), Alabama (897), Tulsa (899) and UCLA (904).
"We had too many big numbers and three putts," Higgins said. "We had too many costly mistakes. We gave it a heck of a shot and I was proud of how hard we fought."
Pepperdine's Michael Putnam leads the individual standings with a three-under-par total of 67-67-73=207. Georgia Tech's Roberto Castro (69-68-71=208) and Augusta State's Major Manning (65-70-73=208) are tied for second.
Freshman Robert Gates led the Aggies with rounds of 68-73-77=218. Junior Jerad Harklau shot 72-75-75=222, junior Andrew Parr carded 81-74-74=229, freshman Martin Piller posted rounds of 81-74-76=231 and senior David Schultz shot 75-79-81=235.
"We've got some great players returning next year and we've added some good players, too," Higgins said. "We learned some valuable lessons here and we'll do nothing but get better. I think the future of Aggie golf is very bright."